


unwind

by mywordsflyup



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cuddling, Cultural Differences, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Oral Sex, Protectiveness, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:15:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mywordsflyup/pseuds/mywordsflyup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He brushes his fingers against her arm and at least she doesn’t pull away. “You’re not an outsider.” </i>
</p>
<p> <i>“I have been ever since they put a sword in my hand and called me Inquisitor.” She says “they” and not “you” and it means something, somehow.</i></p>
<p>Her Keeper is dead and she didn't get to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unwind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Byacolate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/gifts).



> prompt fill for "cure for a broken heart". 
> 
> red lavellan and cullen learning her language and protectiveness for you, b. also banging.

“How has she taken the news?”

Josephine taps her quill against the piece of parchment on her tablet. “As could be expected.”

With a heavy sigh, Cullen pushes his chair back and stands up, his knees protesting a bit after hours of sitting in his drafty office. “Not good, then.”

“No.” Josephine pauses for a moment, a small steep line between her eyebrows. “There is more.”

Of course there is. Cullen braces himself against his desk. “They want something from us. From her.”

A nod. “The clan was near Val Chevin when Keeper Deshanna died. They now seek our assistance in crossing the Waking Sea.”

Cullen furrows his brow. “I wasn’t aware that the clan had moved into Orlais.”

“They kept a low profile.” Josephine doesn’t need to add “after what happened in Wycome” for her meaning to get across. It’s not quite an accusation but it hangs heavy in the air between them anyway.

“They seek to bury their Keeper in the Emerald Graves?” Cullen guesses. “With such a large number, wouldn’t it be easier to circumvent the Waking Sea altogether and take the pass through the Heartlands?”

Josephine clears her throat. “As I understand it, time is of the essence in these matters.”

It takes him a moment to get her meaning. “Oh.” Of course. The Dalish do not burn their dead. “I see.”

“I’m sure there are ways to… With magic perhaps.” Josephine shifts uncomfortably. “But…”

“No,” Cullen interrupts, a little bit too abruptly. “I understand.”

Josephine looks at him for a moment and he swears he can almost see the words forming behind her forehead, waiting to spill out. Like something is holding her back. “So what do you say?”

“To what?”

“Their request.” Her eyes flick to her tablet and back to him. “Even after… what happened, the clan’s numbers are still significant.”

Cullen frowns. “Surely we have the means to charter enough ships to get them across in time. We have moved armies larger than this.”

He can see some of the tension leaving the line of her shoulders. “Surely,” she agrees, scribbling something on her parchment.

The realization hits him just seconds later. “You thought I would disagree.” It’s not a question.

“It’s not… the most practical solution,” Josephine says, her tone careful. “And not strictly Inquisition business.”

It’s not anger that coils in his stomach but something close to it. Disappointment, perhaps. Somehow, he thought they were past this.

“It’s Lavellan’s clan,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “The _Inquisitor’s_ clan. Her family.”

“I know,” Josephine says and lifts her chin. “We should help. I’m not arguing against that.”

“You just thought I would.”

She doesn’t look away. “I apologize. I was mistaken.”

With nowhere to go, nothing to focus on, his irritation just sits somewhere in his chest, hot and nettling. “It’s alright,” he says, exhausted. He grabs some papers of his desk without looking at them, only to set them down again a moment later. “I should… I have to go.”

He thinks she wants to say something else but the door falls closed behind him before she gets the chance.

 

* * *

 

 

He finds Lavellan in her room, bent over her desk with furrowed brow and too much focus to even notice him until he’s standing right beside her.

It’s a map, the one that usually hangs on her wall, now taken down and spread across her desk. Lavellan runs her fingers along the the dotted lines marking trading routes on the Waking Sea. Cullen notices the tight line of her mouth and the tension in her shoulders and all the words get stuck in his throat.

“Val Chevin is close to Val Royeaux,” she suddenly says, her voice void of any emotion that could tell him how she’s feeling.

“Yes,” he says, a bit startled. “A couple of days by horse. Faster if you take the sea route.”

Lavellan nods, the tip of her finger resting on the little star marking Val Royeaux. “We were there,” she says and Cullen feels dread like a stone in his stomach when he realizes what she means. “Not two months ago.”

“Vhenan…” He slips into her own language more easily now, especially when they are alone. There is an intimacy that comes with it. Words only shared between them.

But now her head snaps up and she looks at him sharply. When she answers, it’s in Common, every word hard and unyielding. “I’m fine.” She turns away from the map, away from him. “I should not have been surprised.”

“They should have told you,” Cullen says, irritation nettling him once more. It’s anger, he realizes. On her behalf.

“What? That they moved to Orlais? Or of the Keeper’s illness?” She laughs but it’s a bitter sound that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Both are things best not shared with outsiders.”

He brushes his fingers against her arm and at least she doesn’t pull away. “You’re not an outsider.”

“I have been ever since they put a sword in my hand and called me Inquisitor.” She says “they” and not “you” and it means something, somehow. Even though he was there. Even though he swore himself to that title she despises.

“You are still one of the people,” he says, slipping back into Elven and she lets him this time. “Still Dalish.”

She shakes her head, all tension suddenly leaving her shoulders. “My name is a target on their back. I will not endanger them any further.” She pushes herself away from the table, away from him. Only now does he notice the bag on the bed, the clothes strewn across the floor in front of her dresser.

“Where are you going?” He doesn’t manage to keep the panic out of his voice, not completely.

She turns to him and there is something like regret flickering in her eyes. “Hunting. Just for a few days. I need…” She makes a vague gesture with her hand. “Just for a while.”

He could ask her to stay. Some part of him believes she would if he asked her to. He follows her to the bed and puts a hand on top her bag, just as she wants to stuff a clean undershirt into it. She scowls at him - the kind of frown she usually reserves for pesky nobles and Orlesian food.

“Let me come with you,” he says.

She makes a sound that is pure disbelief. “No.”

“I don’t like the thought of you alone out in the woods. Not like this.”

He can actually feel her irritation, bristling in the air around her. “I’m fine. It’s not the first time I’ve done this, you know.”

She’s slipping through his fingers like sand. “I know,” he says and lets her take the bag from him. “But you don’t have to do this alone.”

She stops and looks at him, her brow furrowed. “Just a few days,” she says, her voice a little more quiet. “Afterwards…” She shrugs and fastens the buckles of the bag. “Anyway, you’re way too loud for hunting. Heavy boots.” The smile on her face is small but it’s better than nothing.

He wants to ask if she’ll come back but bites his tongue. Of course she will. Asking her would be nothing but an insult. He watches her shoulder her bag, her expression pensive for a moment.

He says her name and thinks he sees her drift farther but she turns to him and closes the distance between them. The kiss is fast and hard and when he reaches for her, she is already gone.

It is only when the door has already closed behind her and he finds himself alone next to her bed, that he realizes she didn’t mention her Keeper once.

 

* * *

 

 

She returns three days later, just before sunrise. She wakes him, not on purpose but because his sleep is light without her next to him - even buried deep in the pillows and blankets of the bed that still smells like her.

When she notices him stirring, she comes to stand next to him, one hand light on his shoulder. He’s sleepy enough to react on instinct, pulling her down on the bed until she lands on him with a muffled “oomph”. She is tense for a moment before settling into a more comfortable position, her head cushioned on his shoulder.

She smells of soap and her hair is still a little damp so he knows she went to the baths before she came here. Probably to the war table as well if he knows her at all. He inhales her scent, something like crushed fir needles still somewhere beyond the smell of lavender and honey. She always smells a bit like the woods to him, even if she laughed at him a little when he first told her.

“I missed you,” he says, his voice still thick with sleep. She stretches a bit and kisses him, just softly.

For a moment, it’s enough. Just lying here and letting the heavy blanket of sleep cover the issues still seething underneath. Just for a little while.

He thinks he drifts off back to sleep for a bit because when he opens his eyes, the sun is already creeping over the mountaintops, long fingers of light reaching across the bedroom floor. Lavellan is still in his arms but watching him, her eyes big and alert enough to tell him she didn’t sleep at all.

“Morning,” he says and kisses her, despite the first feeling of worry already stirring in his chest.

“I brought you something,” she says and wiggles out of his arms to reach for the bag on the floor next to the bed. He smiles. This, at least, is familiar to him.

“What is it this time,” he ask as he sits up and leans his back against the headboard, one hand staying on her waist. She settles back and sits herself cross-legged next to him. There is a little frown on her face as she fiddles with two objects in her hands, as if she’s suddenly not so certain about them anymore.

Gently, he takes them from her. It takes him a moment to recognize what they are. “Tusks?”

“From a wild boar,” she says. And then, not quite meeting his eye, “They are very hard to kill.”

He runs his thumb over one pointed end. He hasn’t seen many wild boars in his life but these seem large to him.

“I want to make them into a bracelet,” she says. “Dagna wants to help me capping the ends with gold.”

“And with the runes, I presume?”

She looks more defiant than embarrassed that he has read her intentions to easily. It’s not like this is the first time. He cannot count the charms and protective spells she has given him in their time together. Rings and amulets. Little tokens sewn into the hem of his sleeves. Runes carved into his desk and chair and the headboard of his bed.

“Boars are very hard to kill,” she repeats and takes back the tusks to tuck them away into the dresser of her nightstand. “Good for protective charms.”

He leans forward and touches her knee, just lightly. “Thank you.”

Color rises in her cheeks like it’s the first time but it never fails to delight him. The morning light makes her look softer than she is, or maybe it’s the early hour or the separation. Or perhaps it’s something else altogether.

“Come,” he says and she crawls up to straddle him, her forehead resting against his shoulder. “I missed you,” he says again, low and murmured into her hair. She doesn’t answer but with her hands holding on to the soft fabric of his shirt and with her lips pressing against the skin of his throat.

He can feel the tense muscles of her shoulders and back as he runs his hands down her spine and rests them at the small of her back. When she looks up, there is a small line between her eyebrows and he wishes he could smooth it out with the pad of his thumb. He kisses her instead, sweetly at first and then with hunger when she rolls her hips against him.

She gasps when he rucks up her tunic, thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her hips, and then it’s over her head and gone over the edge of the bed. He grabs her around the waist and lays her out on the sheets like something precious. He knows every scar, every bright twisted mark on her dark skin. Every freckle, from the ones dusting her cheeks to the tiny birthmark on her left breast. He kisses it and then the nipple just below until she arches of the bed and sighs his name.

There is a new bruise just underneath her ribs, an ugly purple thing that he knows better than to comment on and avoids on his way down. Once he has worked off her pants, he sucks his own mark on the inside of her thigh and she hisses, sensitive and impatient.

She is hardly ever loud when he takes her to bed but she cries out now when he parts her with his fingers first and then his tongue. He takes his time until she digs her heel into his back. He hums, every nerve ending buzzing with the taste of her, and when he looks up he finds her watching him, with hooded eyes and her bottom lip between her teeth.

She says something in Elven, a word he doesn’t know. He makes a mental to to ask her later but she urges him back on, her fingers weaving into his hair, and the thought flees from him. He runs his tongue along her folds and sucks and sighs and when he finally presses two fingers inside of her, she breaks apart underneath him.

She hasn’t quite stopped shaking when she pulls him up to her mouth and kisses him, ever impatient. He laughs at the frustrated noise she makes when her attempts at pulling down his pants with her feet prove unsuccessful. He has half a mind to tease her further but she scowls at him and he takes pity, getting rid of the last his clothes himself.

He gasps when she takes him in hand, clever fingers guiding him inside of her and then she lifts her hips to meet him. Once he’s fully seated, he stills for a moment, his forehead rests against hers as he calms his heavy breathing. He once believed he would get used to this - the way she feels and the way she looks at him and the way his chest gets so unbearably tight when she says his name. What a fool he was.

When he finally starts to move, slow strokes that have her keening, he already knows he won’t last long. She wraps her legs around him, urging him on to go faster, harder. He obliges and with every snap of his hips, he feels the sharp point of her fingernails digging into the skin of his shoulderblades. She comes a second time, her cry muffled against his neck, and pulls him over with her easily, every muscle in his body taut like a bowstring and her name falling from his lips until she swallows it with a kiss.

Afterwards, he pulls the covers over them both, her warm back pressed flush against his front, with her head cushioned on his arm. The morning air rustling the curtains in front of the open windows is cool and already smells of autumn but underneath the blanket it’s warm and comfortable.

He presses a kiss into her hair and then one to the tip of her ear, just for good measure. The squirms a bit but stays put and he wraps his other arm around her to hold her close.

She is so silent for a long while that he thinks she finally drifted off to sleep. When she suddenly talks, it’s almost startling. He can feel the tension returning slowly, creeping back into her body like the incoming tide.

“I didn’t think she could die.”

Some part of him knows she can only speak because she doesn’t have to look at him, so he stays silent, only tightening his grip for a moment to let her know he’s still listening.

“I know it’s silly,” she says, her voice thick with something other than sleep or sex. “Even Keepers die, don't they? But Deshanna…” The name hangs heavy in the air and he can feel her shiver despite the warmth. “I never thought about her dying.”

Silence falls once more, no sound but their quiet breathing.

“They wrote to me,” Lavellan says. “I don’t know how sincere they were but they want me to come.”

“To the Emerald Graves?”

“Yes.” She takes a shaky breath. “To put her into the ground and plant a tree and say the rites. It would have been my responsibility if it hadn’t been for…” She lifts her hand, just enough for a sliver of green light to catch his eye before she covers his hand on her chest with hers and sighs.

“Do you want to? After everything?”

She surprises him by turning around, her fingers interlacing with his in the space between them. “They did what they had to do. A Dalish clan that cannot hide. Dragged into the light for all the world to see. When they asked me not to return… It was the right thing to do.”

“They’re your family.”

She frowns. “That’s why it’s my duty to protect them.”

“They broke your heart,” he says and it might just be the first time any of them said it out loud. She takes a sharp breath and he can feel her go tense.

“They didn’t do it to hurt me.”

But they still did, he thinks. She deserves better. To see her hurting, to see her longing for something that was taken from her. It’s too much. But he knows she doesn’t want his anger, not in this. He lift their hands to his lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

“Will you go then? To the Emerald Graves?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know what would be more difficult for her. Seeing them again or having to leave them behind once more after all is said and done.

“I could…” He presses her hand to his chest. “I could come with you. If you want.”

Her eyes go wide, just enough to betray her surprise. “You would?”

“Of course. If you’ll have me.”

She smiles. It’s a small slow thing but it’s a start. He pulls her close, tucking her head underneath his chin. She presses a kiss to his collarbone, her lips soft against his skin.

“Perhaps,” she says very quietly, “Dagna will have the tusks ready before we leave.”

“I wouldn’t want to leave without them.”

He can feel her laughing, her whole body pressed against his, and he doesn't even flinch when she tucks her icy feet underneath his legs.

"Thank you," she murmurs and it's the last thing she says before she drifts off to sleep. Outside, the sun rises over the mountaintops. In here, he listens to her soft breathing and the steady rhythm of her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also follow my [tumblr](http://damnable-rogue.tumblr.com) if you're interested.


End file.
